The challenges with which college and university boards must grapple promise to become only more complex in the coming years, placing ever-greater demands on the leaders of those boards. This article presents a conversation between Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) President Richard D. Legon and two AGB leaders who…

Strategic finance is aligning financial decisions--regarding revenues, creating and maintaining institutional assets, and using those assets--with the institution's mission and strategic plan. The concept known as "strategic finance" increasingly is being seen as a useful perspective for helping boards and presidents develop a sustainable…

The steep economic recession, coupled with increased national expectations and demand for higher education, poses serious challenges for board and presidential leadership. A special panel at the recent National Conference on Trusteeship of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), moderated by AGB President Richard…

Closing programs is the most severe of the three strategies campuses typically consider during difficult financial times: generating new revenue, making across-the-board spending cuts, or undertaking targeted cuts. Closures of academic programs can have lasting negative fallout and the savings may not be as great as anticipated, but at certain…

At many of the nation's most prominent institutions of higher education, sports are far more than just extracurricular activities or even campus spectacles. Contests in football, basketball, and often other sports unite colleges and universities with their students, fans, friends, and alumni, both in person and across the globe. Big-time college…

In the grand economic scheme, the intense public pressure to lower costs came late to higher education. No institution--public or private, non-profit or for-profit--has escaped the always difficult, sometimes protracted discussions of how to increase efficiency and lower costs. Although this intense pressure predates the recent great recession,…

What is most striking about the efforts of colleges and universities to recover from the repercussions of the global financial crisis is the extent to which many are determined to frame the moment as an opportunity. Much of the discourse surrounding the response of academic institutions to the recession, however, has been couched in the context of…

There are currently three categories of independent colleges and universities: Those that are flush with resources, those that are stable but suffering from the effects of the recession, and those whose financial stress has been exacerbated to the breaking point. In this article, the author poses solutions that may represent useful options for…

The economic meltdown has hit U.S. college campuses, and higher education is on the chopping block in state budgets, with cuts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars already approved and hundreds of millions in more cuts on the way. As veteran legislators, the authors have seen this story play out before in previous recessions. The mindset on…

The downturn in the economy of the author's state, North Carolina, so far is less severe than that of much of the rest of the nation, due to their diversified economy, financial discipline, constitutional mandate for a balanced budget, "rainy day" fund, and many years of consistent investment in higher education. In the University of…

The context in which boards are making endowment spending decisions has changed remarkably in the past year. In January 2008, Senators Max Baucus and Charles Grassley, chair and ranking minority member, respectively, of the Senate Finance Committee, cited "explosive college endowment growth" as evidence that college and university boards should…

Most economists expect the current economic downturn to be one of the most severe since World War II. In fact, there is a very real danger that the changing circumstances of students, families, state and federal governments, and educational institutions could interact to significantly diminish educational opportunity in the United States. The most…

"Spectacular error" sounds euphemistic compared to "devastating," "catastrophic," or "meltdown"--terms more commonly summoned to describe the credit crisis and ensuing global economic carnage. Whatever they are labeled, gross miscalculations on Wall Street are having a deleterious effect on college campuses across the country, with many…

During this period of continued economic uncertainty, higher-education institutions are facing a variety of challenges that by now are very familiar to governing boards and institutional leaders, including poor investment returns, reduced liquidity, limited choices in how they structure debt issues, and threats to flexibility in tuition pricing.…

The counterintuitive approach of the world's greatest value investor, Warren Buffett, may be the best hope for colleges and universities during this recession. Buffett's time-tested philosophy of seeking value and investing for the long term remains a sound approach, even if his short-term returns have declined along with those of the rest of the…